In her introduction, Arroyo combines electracy, video and participatory culture. She states that “it will be my contention throughout Participatory Composition that we can again envision electracy through the lens of video: that writing practices are indeed shifting in the direction Ulmer has anticipated but with the added layer of sharing, networking, and participating that Ulmer could not entirely foresee…[V]ideo permits participation. Participatory Composition, then, will cast electracy as the apparatus in which practices from video culture can be interrogated” (2).
Arroyo makes the following claims about electracy:
- “electracy is buzzing all around us; it is not something that we call up when we turn on our computers or mobile devices and shut down when we power them off. Rather, the cultural transformations, inspired by these changes in technologies, reflect phenomena that reach us regardless of the presence of actual machines” (5)
- “Historically, electracy encompasses the second major shift in apparatus: the first was from orality to literacy, and now it’s from literacy to electracy” (5)
- We filter our language through the most current apparatus, so we get terms like “oral literature,” “electronic literacy,” and “media literacy” (6)
- “electracy will not surpass literacy; rather, electracy will work alongside literacy and orality” (6)
- “electracy is often associated with electronic literacy; however…electracy has less to do with a new version of literacy and more to do with a combination of the concepts of electricity and trace…Thus, an engagement with the electronic, or online, world necessarily leaves ‘traces’ of participation, and these traces, when juxtaposed, make up the electrate experience” (7)
- “Electracy emphasizes a multiplicity of meanings for any one concept, supports imagination, and encourages creativity and invention” (7)
- Electracy “started with the invention of photography” (7)
- Values: privileges building networks over building arguments, entertainers are teachers, students are archivists (8)
- “In electracy, one does not critique media; one uses media to perform critique: critique and performance become symbiotic” (18)
- “the layers of participation going on at any given moment on the site reflect the changing social and cultural dynamics of the site and present a rich space for learning…In electracy, we become producers as we are consumers and inhabit these roles differently each time we engage with participatory sites” (19)
- “technologies exist to create networks and not to remain contained in one platform” (21)
She borrows the following table from Ulmer:
For Arroyo, video puts invention at the forefront and “not only gives us information but also invites participation, remixing, and repurposing” (10-1).
Key Terms
- Electracy: “electracy is to digital media what literacy is to alphabetic writing: an apparatus, or social machine, partly technological, partly institutional (2)
- Participatory culture: “Henry Jenkins defines participatory culture as ‘a term that’s used to describe spaces that are very open for individual contributions, where there is a supportive environment where people can learn and grown and share what they produce’…In this regard, participatory culture, as a networked site for learning, allows us to reenvision the image of learning: from skills in which individuals demonstrate competency to the act of creating, sharing, and developing networks around a given concept. (9)
- Participatory composition: “addresses the convergence of the visual, verbal, aural, and corporal by removing the hermeneutic requirement of analysis and instead advocating production and participation in every writing gesture, largely defined” (10)
- Videocy: “a practice that aims to highlight working with image events, and particularly producing moving images”
- Posthumanist paradox: “writing, in all of its manifestations, introduces a space where one doesn’t ‘choose to write’ but where…’everything is writing’…In other words, the ‘posthumanist paradox’ places writing at the center of human interaction, which makes it a cultural practice – not merely a tool for communicating thoughts – intertwined with identity construction, relationship building, and community involvement” (3)
- Teletheory: “to imagine a different apparatus, beginning with a different technology. My assumption is that to inquire into the future of academic discourse in the age of a new technology, we must include the possibility of a change not only in technology, but also in the ideology of the subject and the forms of institutional practice” (Ulmer qtd on 11).
Chapter 6: Afterword: Productive Knowledge, Participatory Composition
Arroyo discusses participatory composition in relation to technological learning. She writes, “Participatory composition inherently includes working with the technologies that help bring the composition to life, and part of the task for students is always finding and locating the best format and platform within which to work…Searching, traveling, and locating an appropriate site is as integral as the space itself, and the dynamics involved in the space are part of the composition. Figuring out technical issues of any one of the free platforms students use is also part of the composition, and, by the end of the semester, students have gained technical skills by simply participating in their fellow students’ compositions” (121).
Arroyo concludes her book with two student examples of participatory composition. She chose these two examples for the following reasons: “Both of these works show, first, how students brand new to the concepts of electracy and participatory culture interacted with the goal of aiming for inventive and productive knowledge; second, how students grapple with the differences between electrate and literate learning and work to combine both electrate and literate practices; and third, how the process of discovery and heeding to unrelated connections aids in building new knowledge” (122-3).
Key Term
- Choragraphy or choric invention: “each practitioner makes discoveries by working with established forms (a la platforms online) and invents new trajectories from them; these trajectories serve as conceptual starting places for others to contribute to rhetorics for electracy” (120).